How certain can we really be that our boss is trustworthy, and does it matter? A metacognitive perspective on employee evaluations of supervisor trustworthiness

• Author: Biyun Hu,Joseph Kim,David De Cremer,Brian C. Holtz,Robert A. Giacalone
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2447
• Published date: 01 September 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

How certain can we really be that our boss is trustworthy, and

does it matter? A metacognitive perspective on employee

evaluations of supervisor trustworthiness

Brian C. Holtz

1

| David De Cremer

2

| Biyun Hu

4

| Joseph Kim

1

|

Robert A. Giacalone

3

1

Fox School of Business, Temple University,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

2

NUS Business School, National University of

Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

3

Boler College of Business, John Carroll

University, University Heights, Ohio, U.S.A.

4

Shanghai International Studies University,

Shanghai, China

Correspondence

Brian C. Holtz, Fox School of Business, Temple

University, 1801 Liacouras Walk, Alter Hall

342, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, U.S.A.

Email: bholtz@temple.edu

Summary

This research helps to integrate the metacognitive concept of evaluation certainty

into the trust literature by demonstrating that certainty can amplify the effects of

trustworthiness evaluations and stabilize trustworthiness evaluations over time.

Across an experimental study (Study 1) and a multiwave survey of employees

(Study 2), we show that trustworthiness evaluations exert a stronger influence on

individuals' trust at higher levels of certainty and that trust transmits the multiplica-

tive effects of trustworthiness evaluations and certainty on key indicators of

employee risk-taking including reliance and disclosure behavior. Further, in Study

2, we show that certainty can help predict change in trustworthiness evaluations

over time. Finally, in a two-wave field survey (Study 3), we examine factors that influ-

ence evaluation certainty and show that relational transparency and leader

prototypicality (LP) have interactive effects on employees' certainty such that the

influence of relational transparency on certainty will be more positive at higher levels

of LP. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS

certainty, disclosure, reliance, trust, trustworthiness

1|INTRODUCTION

The trustworthiness of others is a fundamental concern across all

social contexts (Cottrell, Neuberg, & Li, 2007). Evaluations of trust-

worthiness reflect judgments regarding the degree to which a target

entity possesses the requisite characteristics (e.g., ability, benevo-

lence, and integrity) to be a favorable exchange partner (Mayer,

Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). These evaluations play a pivotal role in

shaping workplace behavior through influencing one's level of trust,

or willingness to accept vulnerability, in employment relationships

(Mayer et al., 1995). Although our evaluations of trustworthiness help

guide our behavior toward others, the accuracy of these key social

judgments is often questionable (Todorov, Olivola, Dotsch, & Mende-

Siedlecki, 2015). Thus, it is natural and adaptive for employees to

contemplate the accuracy of their evaluations of trustworthiness to

avoid costly mistakes in judgment (Kramer, 1994). Despite this recog-

nition, the bulk of organizational trust scholarship has implicitly

assumed that employees feel relatively certain in the accuracy of their

evaluations and has ignored this metacognitive consideration. This

oversight is unfortunate as a focus on evaluation certainty may help

contribute to our understanding of trust dynamics in important ways.

First, certainty may affect the potency of trustworthiness evalua-

tions. To clarify, certainty is a metacognition that involves a “subjec-

tive sense of conviction, confidence, clarity, or correctness”about an

evaluative judgment (Tormala, Clarkson, & Henderson, 2011, p. 422).

People can hold identical evaluations in terms of valence but vary

greatly in how certain they feel regarding their evaluations. Theory

and research suggests that evaluations held with greater certainty

Received: 17 August 2019 Revised: 10 April 2020 Accepted: 24 April 2020

DOI: 10.1002/job.2447

J Organ Behav. 2020;41:587–605. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 587

tend to exert greater influence on subsequent attitudes and behaviors

(Tormala & Rucker, 2007, 2018). We draw from this literature to

delineate the role of evaluation certainty in affecting the influence of

trustworthiness evaluations on trust and more distal trust-related out-

comes including reliance and disclosure. Identifying factors that

impact the predictive potency of trustworthiness evaluations can help

develop a better theoretical understanding of trust phenomena

(e.g., Schoorman, Mayer, & Davis, 1996).

Second, a focus on certainty may help realize new insights

regarding the temporal stability of trustworthiness evaluations. This

pursuit is important given our understanding of how constructs

change over time, and what factors might influence such change, is

fundamental to building useful theory in the organizational sciences

(George & Jones, 2000). Psychological research on metacognition

suggests that evaluations held with greater certainty tend to be

more stable and resistant to change over time (Tormala &

Rucker, 2007, 2018). When individuals feel more certain about an

evaluation, they are less likely to seek out, attend to, or otherwise

consider new information that might prompt a reassessment of

their evaluation (Tormala & Rucker, 2007). As such, trustworthiness

evaluations may be more or less stable depending on how certain

one feels in their evaluations. However, the extant literature has

generally adopted a static view of trust constructs (Lewicki,

Tomlinson, & Gillespie, 2006), and more research is needed to help

understand how trustworthiness evaluations might change over

time (Baer, Matta, Kim, Welsh, & Garud, 2018; Schoorman, May-

er, & Davis, 2007). Thus, we contribute to the trust literature by

examining the role that certainty plays in shaping changes in trust-

worthiness evaluations over time.

Further, if certainty does affect the potency and stability of trust-

worthiness evaluations, then it is useful to explore factors that help to

understand why employees might feel more or less certain in their

evaluations. We draw from the metacognition literature to suggest

that a trustee's relational transparency and prototypicality will jointly

influence how certain one feels regarding their trustworthiness evalu-

ations. Relational transparency captures the extent to which a person

is open in sharing their honest thoughts and feelings and presents

their true self to others (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, &

Walumbwa, 2005). Prototypicality represents the degree to which

individuals perceive someone to embody the normative characteristics

of a group (Hogg, 2001). We argue that relational transparency can

result in employees having more information about a trustee, which

should generally enhance certainty judgments (Tormala &

Rucker, 2018). But we suggest that this effect may depend on the

extent that a trustee is viewed as sharing the prototypical characteris-

tics of the workgroup. More specifically, we expect that the positive

effects of relational transparency will be stronger (weaker) when a

trustee is perceived as more typical (atypical) of the workgroup. It is

important to clarify that while we intend for our hypotheses to be

applicable to any workplace entity (e.g., top management, peers, and

subordinates), we focus specifically on supervisors in this research

because the trustworthiness of direct supervisors is a notably salient

concern for employees given the high interaction frequency and

power asymmetry typical in supervisor–subordinate relationships

(Schoorman et al., 2007).

Taken together, this research draws upon psychological theory on

metacognition (Tormala & Rucker, 2007, 2018) to make three impor-

tant contributions to the organizational trust literature. First, we help

to extend understanding of boundary conditions around the effects of

trustworthiness evaluations on trust. Specifically, we integrate the

metacognitive construct of evaluation certainty into the organizational

trust literature by empirically demonstrating the moderating role of

certainty in the effects of employee evaluations of supervisor trust-

worthiness on both proximal (trust) and distal outcomes (reliance and

disclosure). Second, this research adds to our understanding of factors

that influence change in employee trustworthiness evaluations over

time. In particular, we demonstrate that greater certainty helps to pro-

mote greater temporal stability in trustworthiness evaluations. Third,

we elucidate factors that can influence employees' certainty by dem-

onstrating that relational transparency impacts certainty but that the

effects are contingent upon the perceived prototypicality of a trustee.

2|THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF

EVALUATION CERTAINTY ON

TRUSTWORTHINESS–TRUST RELATIONS

Mayer et al. (1995) defined that trustworthiness reflects an evaluative

judgment based on three core characteristics of a trustee (i.e., ability,

benevolence, and integrity). Further, they clarified that evaluations of

an entity's trustworthiness primarily exert influence on relevant out-

comes through the psychological state of trust (henceforth referred to

as trust), which reflects a willingness to accept some degree of vulner-

ability in an exchange relationship. Meta-analytic research supports

the view that trustworthiness significantly influences one's trust but

has also revealed significant variability in relations between trustwor-

thiness and trust, suggesting the need to explore potential moderating

influences (Colquitt, Scott, & Lepine, 2007). For instance, Colquitt

et al.'s (2007) meta-analytic results suggest that the percentage of

variance due to artifacts (Var%) for the relationships between trust in

one's leader and ability (14.5%), benevolence (12.7%), and integrity

(9.5%) was all much smaller than the 75% guideline for determining

the need to explore potential moderators (Schmidt & Hunter, 2014).

Moreover, their findings suggest that the three core dimensions of

trustworthiness together account for only about 54% of the variability

in trust (Multiple R

2

= .539).

1

In other words, almost half of the vari-

ance in trust is unaccounted for by evaluations of trustworthiness.

Similarly, economic experiments often report imperfect relationships

between perceptions of an exchange partner's trustworthiness and

the level of trust a player exhibits in trust games (e.g., van't Wout &

Sanfey, 2008). Thus, there is not a one-to-one correspondence

1

To estimate the multiple R

2

value, we conducted a relative weight analysis using the meta-

analytic intercorrelations among trustworthiness dimensions (i.e., ability, benevolence, and

integrity) and trust reported in Colquitt et al. (2007). The multiple R

2

value increases to .551

if trust propensity is included as an additional predictor.

588 HOLTZ ET AL.